Steve Diamond to focus purely on rugby at Sale Sharks

Almost a year to the day after being appointed as Sale Sharks chief executive, Steve Diamond has effectively stepped down from the role in order to train all his efforts on preserving Sale’s perilous Premiership status.

Almost a year to the day after being appointed as Sale Sharks chief executive, Steve Diamond has effectively stepped down from the role in order to train all his efforts on preserving Sale’s perilous Premiership status.

With former director of rugby John Mitchell having suddenly returned home to South Africa after barely a month in the role, Diamond will now front up rugby operations with the Sharks for the rest of the campaign assisted by head coach Bryan Redpath and Academy Transition coach Pete Anglesea. And that means there will be no role for former Rotherham head coach Andre Bester.

Sale had been close to bringing South African Bester on board as a forwards coach but have instead decided to stick with the current coaching set-up.

With Diamond concentrating on becoming effectively Sale's third director of rugby this season, club co-owner Ian Blackhurst will fill the breach as the Sharks’ interim CEO, working in conjunction with fellow owner Brian Kennedy.

“John has gone back to South Africa for personal reasons,” Diamond revealed. “He was contracted until the end of February with a longer term option and for personal reasons he has chosen to go back now, which we respect.

"So I’m going to step back into the breach and head up the rugby side of things. I’ll be running the rugby and concentrating solely on the rugby side of things.

“In terms of the CEO, if you boil it down in the long term, we haven’t got a business if the rugby’s not right so it’s far more important we get that right.

“We’ve got senior people such as Ian who can take over the CEO side of things.”

Our newspapers include the flagship Manchester Evening News - Britain's largest circulating
regional daily with up to 130,485 copies - as well as 20 local weekly titles across Greater
Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire.

Free morning newspaper, The Metro, published every weekday, is also part of our portfolio,
delivering more than 200,000 readers in Greater Manchester.

Greater Manchester Business Week is the region’s number one provider of business news andfeatures, targeting a bespoke business audience with 12,687 copies every Thursday.

Every month, M.E.N. Media’s print products reach 2.2 million adults, spanning from Accrington
in the north to Macclesfield in the south.